Saturday May 29th found me running all over New England for Memorial Day Weekend festivities and moving errands. At 10 P.M., I found myself in my old apartment in Salem, Massachusetts cleaning the place up and dropping off the keys to the landlord. I was looking at a late night three hour drive home to Vermont which was not very appealing. Also, I was planning a run at Killington’s Superstar the following day. Killington being two hours away from St. Johnsbury had me doing over 12 hours of driving in a 24 hour window which was very unappealing. Fortunately, I had planned for the dilemma by already packing my gear and sleeping bag in my car. I saved a four hour round trip from St. Johnsbury by driving straight up to Killington that night and doing some car camping at Hotel Mobil.

Says the cashier when I walk into the store the next morning looking for breakfast: “Was that you sleeping in the car?” Says I: “Yes it was!”

I arrived slightly disappointed with the offering at Superstar. It was continuously skiable for approximately half its vertical which would be a total of 600 feet. I had been hoping enough snow would have remained for a top to bottom expedition. However, I was more than happy to be able to make a few runs on 600 vertical feet for minimal effort. The weather was threatening rain, but that wouldn’t stop me from earning some late season turns. Once Killington shuts down, the only way to make turns in New England is to earn them. So earn them I did.

I started out with skins on my skis hoping for one last skin of the season. Unfortunately, it was not to be. Superstar’s pitch was enough to sabotage plans of a possible skin about 150 vertical feet up around tower 3. I ditched the skins and booted up noting that I had company en route below. I reached the top in short order and grabbed a snack while watching another skier make his way up the boot ladder.

Stepping into bindings on May 29th was a great feeling. I took the center of the trail with decent results. The snow was wet corn and delicious. Sweet turns were had all the way down with the top third yielding the most excitement per turn. Down lower the snow got progressively worse. I clicked out and joined the other skier for another hike up. Upon the second decent, I banged out skier’s right on the top third and turns were epic! Sensational turns were had through half the run and less so towards the bottom. I reflected to the other skier how amazed I was that a few earned runs are so much more satisfying than a full day on the lifts sometimes. We both grabbed one more run on Superstar before calling it quits as a small sprinkle started to move in.